minuszkafandomcom_hu-20200214-history
The practice of English language teaching
Harmer, J. (2007): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman. 4th edition. The whole* thing in bullet points, and -for the very first time on this site- in English. yeey *Not the whole Chapter 1 - The Changing World of English A language story * By the end of the 20th century, Latin was replaced by English (New 'lingua franca') (Közvetítő nyelv) * Now, the non-native speakers outnumber the native speakers * Linguistic flummery on what makes someone know a language The triumph of English? Aka.: How do languages become 'truly' global * Colonial history - British empire ** We all learned about this stuff in high school. See: America, Australia * Economics ** English is being pushed by the (United States as a) world economic power ** This leads to globalisation * Information exchange ** Academic discourses take place (Mainly) in English ** Internet is a great help right here * Travel ** Tourism is cool, right? * Popular culture ** We like copying America, don't we? See: Music, TV series The effect of English * Nowadays learning English is necessary (Cultural and linguistic imperialism) * English is spreading, and it has some impact on other languages * Question of cultural identity English as a global language Very cool illustration by Kachru: Inner circle: Countries where English is the primary language (Britain, America, Australia...) Outer circle: Countries where English had become official language or widely-used second language (India, Nigeria Singapore...) Expanding circle: Countries where English is learnt as foreign language (Hungary, Mexico, Japan...) Also, take a look at 'Figure 2' where the previous figure is being sucked in by a black hole. (Modified version since linguistics is a misbehaving science, or something like that.) The future of English Long story short: We don't really know. EFL, ESL, ESOL, & ELF English can be taught in various ways (General English, Academic English, English as foreign language...) ELF English as Lingua Franca In the discussions where English is used as Lingua Franca, people usually: * Do things they 'shouldn't', but * They are successful communicators Teaching English in the age of ELF * Learners should learn Englishes (Not only a variety of English) ** Learn about similarities and differences * Developing language in classroom (Should we cease to correct?) * Native-speaker variety as an appropriate pedagogical model (Is it okay?) Native speaker varieties and other Englishes Which variety should be taught? Important factors: grammar, lexis and pronunciation * Great differences between American and British English * Other Englishes shouldn't be ignored (Canadian, Australian, Irish...) World English education * Good English is requirement for tertiary education * In some secondary schools subjects are taught in English * EAP - English for academic purposes * CLIL - Content and Language Integrated Learning (competent English speakers by the time they get to uni level) * Whatever we teach: Raise awareness to these varieties Chapter 2 - Describing the English language Language in use (Ez a rész egy apró rizsa amúgy) * We use language to express what we want to say * Can be done with various media * Formal Vs. informal language What we want to say * We have pragmatic skills (See the example) Form and meaning * This part explains the previous example and provides other examples too * The point: What we say is not always what we mean ** (The person in the example never asked the girl to extinguish the cigarette) Purpose * Mentioning Austin and his idea of what he calls 'performative' words. He is explaining a bunch of things in his work, How to do things with words ''(Avagy ''Tetten ért szavak.) I'm so glad I had to read it, so here is the point: Some words are 'performative', which means they actually do something just by saying it. Some examples I remember from the book: * Saying 'I do' during the marriage ceremony. (Results in successful marriage, you become a husband or wife) * Naming your child/ship, or whatever. (They will have a name, obviously.) Appropriacy and register We express what we would like to say in different ways. The way we speak is influenced by many factors, for example: * Setting (Library vs Night club) * Participants * Gender * Channel (Written, spoken, telephone...) * Topic * Tone Language as text and discourse Discourse organization If we want a collection of sentences/utterances to becomes effective (meaningful), the text needs: * Coherence ** They must be in the right, logical order. (If we shuffle a text, it might turn our meaningless) * Cohesion ** Lexical cohesion ** Grammatical cohesion Genre Understanding the genres help us understand the content of a text. For example: Genre of Advertisements: We recognize an advertisement when we see one -> We recognize the meaning Grammar